Excavating buckets and other excavating equipment are typically subjected to harsh conditions. A series of wear members are usually provided to protect the digging edges from premature wear. Wear members have been secured to the digging edge in many different ways.
For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,570,365 to Bierwith, the wear members are secured to the lip of the bucket by the use of a wedge and spool lock arrangement that is fit through a hole in the lip spaced from the front edge. In this arrangement, the spool pinches the rear parts of the wear member against the inner and outer faces of the lip as the wedge is driven into the hole. However, under load, the legs of the wear member can shift and cause loosening of the lock and possible loss of the wear member. In addition, the formation of a hole in the lip weakens the lip and its ability to effectively resist the large loads applied as the lip is forced into the ground.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,995,384 to Wood and U.S. Pat. No. 4,748,754 to Schwappach, the hole in the lip is eliminated and replaced with a lateral boss that is welded to the inner face of the lip generally parallel to the front edge. While these constructions avoid weakening the lip with a through-hole, they place very large loads on the lateral boss, and thus, can only be reliably used in low stress environments.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,088,214, the wear member is secured by a boss that is welded to the inner face of the lip so as to extend generally normal to the front edge. The wear member, then, is slipped over the boss via a complementary slot. As can be appreciated, this orientation of the boss greatly reduces the loads on the boss as compared to the lateral bosses. Nevertheless, the wear member is typically secured by a single lock located to one side of the lip. While this is adequate for most applications, this arrangement does orient the lock in an off-center relationship relative to the lip and thus engenders increased vertically oriented stresses on the legs of the wear member as well as the lip. Greater balance in resisting the loads applied to the wear member can be achieved by utilizing a boss and lock for the inner and outer legs (see, e.g., FIG. 5 of the '214 patent). However, this construction requires more steel and twice as many bosses and locks for the attachment of each wear member.
As a result, there is a need for an improved assembly for attaching a wear member to the digging edge of an excavator that avoids the problems of the prior art.